A broadcast router allows each one of a plurality of outputs therefrom to be assigned the signal from any one of a plurality of inputs thereto. For example, an N×M broadcast router has N inputs and M outputs coupled together by a routing engine which allows any one of the N inputs to be applied to each one of the M outputs. Oftentimes, it is desirable to construct a larger broadcast router, for example a 4N×4M broadcast router, from plural smaller broadcast routers, for example, the aforementioned N×M broadcast router. To interconnect smaller broadcast routers requires the use of plural links, for example, copper wire, to transport signals between the smaller broadcast routers. The use of such links can, however, act as a limit on the speed at which the broadcast router can operate.
Clock data recovery (or “CDR”) serial data links are often used when high speed data transfers between devices, for example, the aforementioned broadcast routers, are desired. Heretofore, CDR serial data links have been used in applications which allow the retransmission of data with errors. However, when using a broadcast router, there is insufficient time to allow for retransmissions of data As a result, in order to use a CDR or other high speed serial data link, a broadcast router must be equipped for forward error correction (or “FEC”) of the received data. The use of current FEC techniques, for example, Viterbi or Reed-Solomon FEC techniques, however, would add considerable overhead to the data transmissions. 8-bit/10-bit (or “8B/10B”) encoders and decoders are often used to improve reliability in data transmissions. An 8B/10B encoder encodes 8-bit bytes of binary data into 10-bit bytes plus a disparity bit which indicates whether there is a difference in the number of ones and the number of zeros in the 10-bit byte. Conversely, an 8B/10B decoder converts 10-bit bytes of binary data into 8-bit bytes plus a disparity bit. While 8B/10B encoders and decoders can be used to identify data errors, generally, they are only capable of identifying data errors on a byte-wide basis and cannot identify a particular data bit, within a “bad” data byte, which is erroneous.